he quite fancied you, you know
by Mainli
Summary: all she has left of him is a bowtie and lost confessions. or the one where the Doctor's new face and Clara discuss his past self.


**This take places directly after _The Time of the Doctor _ends, so, spoilers for that. Many thanks to RandomVictorian for betaing!**

* * *

"Do ye happen to know how to fly this thing?" he says. His eyes are wild, and his hands are hovering over the controls.

From somewhere in her mind, Clara thinks she might be in what some would call shock. She's simply standing there, staring at him, and her own eyes have to be as wild and confused as his.

"Well, come on," he says, and his voice is soft. "We're _crashing!_" As if to prove his point the ship rattles and throws Clara away from the railing, at the same time, startling her out of her shock.

"I…I," she grabs the edge of the console to keep herself steady. "Maybe." She scans the buttons, levers, switches, trying to recall which is what. She's flown it before, she saved the Doctor that way, but right now her brain doesn't seem to be working.

He is staring at her, his gaze searching. "Do you know me?" she blurts, because his expression is so blank, so confused.

He blinks, and there's a moment before he answers. "Yes, yes, the impossible girl he called ye," his hand hovers over a lever, and says the next with an unconcerned tone, as though he's telling her the time of day. "He quite fancied ye, you know."

Something seems to slam against Clara's chest, and a sob rises in her throat. A confession. One she never got to hear. Not from his lips.

But she pushes that sob back, and clears her brain, because they are crashing, and if they crash, she might possibly die, and that's enough to shake her out of it.

So, she recalls the times the Doctor tried to teach her, leaning from behind her to point out each mechanism. "That one," she says as the ship shakes again. She leans forward, without a word from him (and at this point she seems to know more than him anyway), and pulls it.

The TARDIS stops falling. It doesn't move either, it's frozen in mid-air. Mid-space.

And Clara finds she can breathe again.

* * *

He doesn't notice the bowtie is gone until he steps back into the console room after a good who knows how many hours rest. Everything else he left —the fish fingers and custard, his old selves first outfit, are still strewn across the floor, but the bowtie is missing.

He doesn't dwell on it, but simply throws the fish fingers and custard away, a finality settling over him as he does so. He folds up the old clothes, readying them to go into the endless closet of the Doctor's many…tastes in outfits.

When he's finished, he turns his mind to Clara. They are still floating in space, so she has to be somewhere on the ship, but where? That could take him awhile to figure. He doesn't know this ship as well as he used to, and he doesn't know Clara like he did either.

Clara hasn't cried once since he regenerated. She stabilized the TARDIS, then helped him to his old room, and told him to rest, and he did. Her cheeks were dry the whole time, and she was calm.

But she didn't smile once either

The Doctor makes his way down the corridors, past a swimming pool — blimey, that's nice to have. He forgot about it – and various other rooms he can't help but stop to explore.

He ducks inside the library, and through the maze of shelves, occasionally stopping to pull off a book and skim the pages. He's just going to take down another one when he hears the soft sound of crying above him. Dropping the book, he looks upwards. "Clara?" he calls, and though it may be a bit mean, he hopes it's her. Because otherwise someone—or something—has sneaked on his ship and he doesn't want to deal with that right now. And he needs to locate his companion.

The crying stops immediately, and there is a silence. "Yes?" comes a voice, and her head pops over the railing above him.

He lets out a sigh, and then climbs up the steps. She's standing next to a chair, clutching what he recognizes as the missing bowtie. _Oh dear._

He clears his throat. "Have ye been crying?"

Clara starts. "Oh…well, yes," she says, wiping at her cheeks. "Of course I am."

He grabs a book from the shelf and skims through it, just for something to do. "I am sorry," he says. "But there was nothing I could do to stop it."

"I know," she says, and she clutches the bowtie a little tighter.

"And ye might see him again," he tries. His accent has been breaking in and out since his regeneration, but now it's stabilizing. "After all we saw my Tenth self, and…" he frowns. "I don't really know what number to call him, but him."

"Captain grumpy?" Clara says, her voice choked, though she's just barely smiling.

"Oh, is that whit I called him?" the Doctor says, feeling rather sorry for aforementioned Captain grumpy. He wonders what undignified nickname his old self will give him if they ever meet, and finds himself a little worried.

Clara nods, clasping her hands— and the bowtie —behind her back. She is quiet, they both are for a few moments, as the Doctor continues to skim through the book. It's about different dimensions and universes, and the Doctor has a feeling it was his subconscious that urged him to pick this one up. Gallifrey is on his mind, and one thing this new him knows that finding it is his goal more than ever now.

"It's not," Clara is speaking again, and he draws his attention away from the book, and from his beloved Gallifrey. She bits her lip. "It's not that I don't like you, or that I don't think you're…the Doctor." Something flickers across her face at those words and he gets the feeling she might just be lying. "It's just…he's dead. You may be the Doctor, but he's gone, and he's dead." She swallows. "And that hurts. It's going to hurt for while."

The Doctor rubs his right thumb over page of the book (_Parallel Universes, Other Dimensions, and You_). He's seen his share of lose, and death, and he knows humans (in their terms of years) take longer recovering from it, because of the simple fact they have shorter lifespan.

"I'm sorry," he says again, because that's he can say. He has no words to comfort her. "I miss him too, odd as it may sound. We always have a sense of fondness and sadness for our past selves, but at the same elation at being here and alive fights it." That may have been the wrong thing to say, because Clara simply sniffs and sinks into the armchair across from him. He sighs again. He doesn't know how to deal with humans yet. He is perfectly still for a moment, then crosses over to the armchair, and kneels down next to it. He places his hand on the arm of the chair, near hers, but not touching it. "I am sorry Clara. It always hurts them, ma companions, when we change."

He is silent, and steeples his fingers together. "If it makes ye feel at all better, he had one of the best and longest lives of all of us. He had purpose, he had a town that needed him, and he stayed there. He aged naturally, and he regenerated of that. Of old age. The closest of us to have been able to have that was my first incarnation. He had friends, a whole planet to call family."

"And had Handles," Clara says, her voice soft. She raises her head to look at him, then swipes at her eyes again. She's biting her lip hard, and she blinks, one quick blink after the other, her eyelids fluttering over tears ready to fall.

The Doctor smiles in sadness, a small tug at his heart when she mentioned Handles. A time lord and cyberman as friends, who would have thought? "He did. And he had ye Clara. He had ye're determination. He never would have regenerated if you hadn't saved him time and time again."

Clara bits her lip again, the bowtie clasped between her two hands. She rubs her fingers against it, and her eyes crinkle. "Bowties _are_ cool," she says softly, so soft he barely catches it. This strange man, with his long purple coat, and flairing hands. Hands that would cup her cheeks gently. With hair falling over his forehead, his non-existent eyebrows, and silly affection, and silly yet beautiful man…this Doctor had saved thousands worlds, and they didn't even know he was there. But this time, everyone, everyone in that town had known and loved him.

"He… Clara looks up, meeting the new man's eyes. "He did have a good life, didn't he?" She presses her lips together, gazing down at him sadly. "A really good life."

The Doctor smiles kindly at her. "He did, Clara. And Clara, I meant what I said earlier. He," he makes sure to say very clearly 'he' because while his old self may have felt this way, he doesn't, and doesn't think he ever will. Hopefully about no one. That's not to say he doesn't love Clara, because he does, already, but it's in a entire different way. Why, he thinks, does all of his most recent selves indulge in falling in love? He had come close once in a magenta moon before his Eighth self, like with Sarah, but always fought it back, buried it, and managed to forget about it. Lately, it's been anything but that.

"He did quite fancy ye," Clara freezes. "Even if," he says, thinking of Eleven's sudden kiss to Tasha Lem, "he dinnae always show it."

"Was he ever going to tell me?" she says. Her voice is quaky, it's fragile, something he remembers not hearing very often.

He doesn't know the answer to that. "Maybe," he says. "It probably would have slipped out eventually."

She presses her lips together again, and he know she's trying not to cry. Clara feels a rushing weight falling through her body, and she just wants to curl up and cry, and cry. "Thank you for telling me," she says finally, her voice scratchy.

The Doctor dips his head into a nod. They are both silent for an amount of time he can't tell. He picks up the book, and reads some more, while she fingers the bowtie. She doesn't cry, though sometimes he thinks she's about to.

"What are you reading?" she says softly. Her voice is more whole, more her. It's strong.

"Parallel Universe, Dimensions, and Ye," he says, holding up the book for her

She laughs suddenly. It's a bit tired, a bit worn, but it's a laugh. "You're Scottish aren't you?"

"Nae, I'm a timelord," he says. "Time-lords aren't Scottish."

"Yeah, well you are. You've picked up quite a bit from us, haven't you."

He tilts his head, considering. "I suppose sae," he says. "Some of you aren't a bad lot, like ye."

Clara smiles, resting her head against the back of the chair. "Not really sure if I'm going to accept that compliment or not, seeing as 'ye' just insulted my entire species," she says.

"Eh, sorry," he says. "That's a bit of a habit."

She shakes her head, still smiling. "Time-lords," she mutters.

"Humans," he says, but fondly.

And he begins to hope that him and his companion might actually be on their way to becoming what humans deem friends.


End file.
